


Heists and Rivalries

by fairietailed



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: (sorry), Cat Burglars, Crime AU, F/M, Rivals, but they both really dislike each other, chat burglars, or should i say........, they both really want these diamonds
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-24
Updated: 2016-07-30
Packaged: 2018-05-28 18:33:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,640
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6340645
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fairietailed/pseuds/fairietailed
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Listen to me,” Ladybug’s voice rises a fraction of an octave, her whispers turning into a hiss, “I’ve had this place marked for months. There’s no way some tom cat like you is coming in here and taking it from me.”</p><p>If looks could kill then he would probably be long buried. But Chat only grins back, folding his arms behind his head and leaning against an air duct.</p><p>"Well that’s a shame, because this cat came to crush a pest. This place is mine, Bugaboo, so I’ll give you one last chance to fly away.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I needed to vent write and this prompt was too fun to pass up on. This was the final result after about an hour.  
> I twisted it a bit, but the general premise is the same~  
> \--  
> “We’re both professional thieves and we were robbing the same place, at the same time. We know each other by reputation so we decide to go halfsies. But I had a VERY intricate plan that didn’t involve sounding any alarms, and your plan is making everything go boom! so we’re stuck arguing on top of the ceiling of a jewelry store.”

The night is quiet, save for the very hushed whispers on top of a very small roof in the heart of Paris. It’s late; no one is awake to hear them, and it’s much too dark for anyone to hope to see.

“Listen to me,” Ladybug’s voice rises a fraction of an octave, her whispers turning into a hiss, “I’ve had this place marked for months. There’s no way some _tom cat_ like you is coming in here and _taking_ it from me.”

If looks could kill then he would probably be long buried. But Chat only grins back, folding his arms behind his head and leaning against an air duct.

"Well that’s a shame, because this cat came to crush a pest. This place is mine, Bugaboo, so I’ll give you one last chance to fly away.”

She’s on him in a second, sprinting across the roof and pinning him to the duct he leans on.

“I swear to god Chat Noir, I will end you right here. I’ve had this place for months, and I finally have everything worked out to the _tee_. The only way you’re taking this from me is if I’m dead.”

His eyes flash fiercely behind his mask, his grin twisting into a near sneer.

“Didn’t you hear me? I already told you that I’m here to crush an annoying little bug, didn’t I?”

The claws behind his head drag along the metal air duct, the resounding screech enough to make Ladybug drop her guard as her hands fly up to cover her ears. Her eyes widen in recognition, body moving on near instinct as she leaps out of the way of the punch aimed at her side.

She turns to face him, spinning on her heel and unclipping her yoyo from her belt. He’s faster, though, and is in front of her before she can register it. He doesn’t miss his mark this time, his fist landing squarely in her stomach, sending her flying.

“That tiny little thing isn’t going to help you, Bug.” His voice is smooth, calculated, calmer than she would like it to be. She wheezes from her spot across the rooftops, pushing herself onto her hands and knees and coughing. “You should leave your children’s toys at home.”

“I could say the same to you, _chaton_.” She heaves herself up, shifting her weight to the balls of her feet and spinning her yoyo at her side. “Since when have they let baton twirlers rob banks?”

He laughs and she smiles, though there’s no friendliness in either action.

“Do you need a break, my Lady? It seems you’ve gotten slow since last we met.”

“It hasn’t been that long. I’d say it’s been about six months.”

Chat shakes his head, retracting his claws back into the gloves that cover his hands. He pulls his staff out from behind his back instead, extending it out and holding it in Ladybug’s direction, challenging her directly.

“And in those six months I’ve grown stronger. What have you done?”

She clicks her tongue, annoyed by their banter, pushing herself off and running toward him.

They go back and forth for almost five minutes, the both of them swinging and kicking and flipping around one another in a tandem that was nearly synchronized, neither of them able to land a solid hit on the other.

Finally they separate, hopping backwards and gasping for air, both of them doubled over with hands on their knees as they breathe. Once their breath is back they stand across from each other, a heavy silence stretching between them.

Ladybug is the first to break the stand-off, running at Chat for the third time that night.

“Ah ah, Bug. That’s such a direct approach, it’s predictable.” He leaps backward, landing on top of the same duct he’d been leaning on earlier. Ladybug smiles, yoyo flying from her grasp and winding its way around his ankle before he can stop it.

“Whoever said I’m predictable is a liar, kitty cat.”

She pulls, and he frantically claws at the top of the duct to attempt to remain on top of it. But her line is stronger, retracting and bringing him along with it. He lands with a thud on the floor in front of her, and she grins down at him as she swings.

Chat rolls, though, her fist digging into the gravel on the roof instead of his nose like she’d hoped. It hurts more than his face would have, and she growls as she pulls her fist back up. Chat is already standing, staff in hand and battle ready.

She rolls onto the balls of her feet again, this time leaving her yoyo clipped to her belt. Instead she pulls her fists up, guarding her face and bending her knees a bit as she stares him down.

Her eyes are practically on fire, Chat thinks, and he grins as he rushes her. He swings his staff and is blocked by her forearm as she swings her arm up, twisting her arm and grabbing the end of the shaft and pulling him closer. The sudden change of momentum throws off his balance, and he comes reeling in just as her leg swings up to knee him in the gut.

He chokes and falls, and she rips his staff from his hands and sends it clattering across the rooftop.

“Ah ah, Chat. That’s such a direct approach, it’s predictable.” She repeats his words back to him, reaching down and pulling his wrist to straighten his arm out in front of her. She kneels down, a leg on either side of his torso, and pulls back to hit him in the face. He uses his free hand to stop her fist, though, pushing his upper body up and headbutting her in the nose instead.

She falls back with a cry, covering her nose, and he sits up.

“Listen, you need to stop aiming for my face. It’s too pretty to damage, really, and I’d appreciate it if you could hit me somewhere else.”

She glares at him, eyes practically feral, and something in his gut twists as she stands.

“Fuck you, Chat Noir. You’re _dead_ now.”

He opens his mouth to make a retort but is cut off by a dart to the shoulder. He howls, clawing at the small thing to get it out, get it out, get it _out-_

He’s interrupted by a foot directly to the chest, sending him flying across the rooftop.

He coughs, wheezing a bit as he lay spread eagle, debating whether it would be smarter to just stay down. But as Ladybug appears above him, eyes glowing behind her mask with three more darts in between her knuckles, he realizes that he doesn’t just need to move, he needs to _run_.

So he rolls, ignoring the sting in his shoulder as he does, twisting into a crouching position and taking off across the rooftop.

Screw the diamonds.

He’d rather be alive and try again than die and never get the chance to.

He scoops up his baton as he runs, sliding to a halt at the edge of the roof and turning to look at Ladybug, making sure he won’t be pursued. She’s seething next to the air duct, hissing as she presses at the already forming bruises on her nose. He hesitates, pulling out the dart in his shoulder and staring at her across the distance between them.

She looks up, making eye contact, and he freezes where he is.

They sit like that for what seems like an eternity, neither of them wanting to break the silence between them. Finally, though, Chat holds out the dart in his hand, taking a tentative step forward.

“Do... you want your dart back?”

She nods, refusing to look at him as she holds her free hand out. He walks across the rooftop, gravel crunching beneath his feet before he makes it in front of her, crouching and placing the dart carefully in her upturned palm.

“Thanks.” She mumbles and he laughs out loud, falling backward onto his butt and running his hands through his hair.

“Yeah, don’t mention it. I wouldn’t have to give it back if you didn’t try and skewer me, though.”

“You _headbutt_ me. What was I supposed to do?!” She pulls her hand away from her nose, and they hiss simultaneously.

“Sorry. But you were going to punch me in the face!”

“That doesn’t mean you have to _headbutt me, Chat!”_

He rubs the back of his neck, shrugging. “It was instinct!”

She crosses her arms and turns her head, pouting. “Whatever.”

Another silence falls over them, this one more comfortable than the last. Chat sighs after a minute, standing and holding out a hand to the girl below him.

“Half.”

She looks up, eyebrows pulled together. “What?”

“We’ll go halves on this mark. Just this once.”

She stares at his outstretched hand with skepticism. “Why?”

“It’ll be an apology for headbutting you. And for you throwing a dart into my shoulder.” He pushes his hand out further, impatient. “We need to hurry though. We’ve spent enough time arguing up here. Are you going to take it or not?”

“Okay.”

She grabs his hand, and he pulls her up. They shake, turning toward the skylight in the center of the roof.

“Let’s go.” 

* * *

 

_“Mon Dieu, this is the_ last _time I ever work with you!”_

 

_“Ha ha!! Come on, Bugaboo, this is fun! We should partner up more often!”_

 

_“Not if you’re just going to_ **_blow everything up, Chat!_ ** _Now we have half of Paris on our tails!”_

 

_“I believe I’m the only one with a tail here, my Lady.”_

 

_“I’m going to kill you.”_


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Decided to pick this up after a very long time of leaving it alone!

_ “The Chanel Boutique in Paris was robbed last night, the thieves taking over half of a million dollars in diamonds before leading a chase across the city, escaping before police could stop them.” _

 

_ “Another store has been robbed, the latest work of Ladybug and Chat Noir. If any civilians have any leads about who might be behind the masks, they are urged to call-” _

 

_ “This is the 5th robbery in nearly 3 months. It seems The Ladybug and Chat Noir have only grown more successful since pairing up, and the police seem to be having problems apprehending the two fugitives.” _

* * *

“I told you, I’m  _ not _ working with you again.”

“Oh come on, Bugaboo. You heard the news today; you and I are the  _ best _ . Who’s to say we couldn’t be unstoppable?”

* * *

Ladybug sighs, tilting her head back to stare at the sky. She takes a deep breath, inhaling through her nose and exhaling out of her mouth into the night air, breath clouding in front of her. She closes her eyes, stars already imprinted into the back of her eyelids, and rolls her shoulders back to stretch. Her head lolls to the side, and she opens her eyes to see Chat beside her, grinning.

She sighs again, this time not from relaxation.

“Don’t look at me like that. It’s creepy.”

His grin only widens, and he puts his weight onto his staff, leaning in toward her. “I’m sorry, my Lady. You just look  _ paw _ -sitively  _ purr _ -fect tonight.”

She swears she can see the strip of leather attached to the back of his belt twitch.

She shakes her head, ignoring the thought, saying instead, “Are you one of those people who takes their personas real serious like? Because I swear if I have to listen to a million cat puns every time we work together-”

Chat laughs, pushing himself back and retracting the staff, tucking it into his belt and sauntering across the rooftop. “You’ll come to love them. Trust me.”

Ladybug only rolls her eyes, moving to follow him. They jog across the rooftop, leaping over the small gap between buildings and landing silently on the other side. Chat leans against a chimney, crossing his arms and gazing at the skylight in the center of the roof. Ladybug crouches beside him.

“How’re you going to get in?”

Ladybug practically snorts, pulling the duffel bag she’s carrying higher up on her shoulder, nodding in the direction of the bag with an eyebrow raised.

“I’m not going to blow anything up, that’s for sure.”

“That was  _ one time _ , Bug!”

“No it wasn’t.”

“... Fair enough.”

She huffs out a laugh, shaking her head and moving to the skylight. Chat follows, pushing off of the chimney and folding his arms behind his head. She shrugs off the duffelbag, dropping it to the floor and unzipping it. She pulls out a screwdriver and sticks it in between her teeth before reaching in a second time and pulling out a glass cutter as well, suctioning it to the glass she leans over. She pushes a sponge drenched in kerosene beneath the blade, turning it. After making it around once, she tosses the sponge back into her bag, putting pressure on the glass cutter and turning a second time.

Chat winces at the screeching it makes, glancing around them in hopes that no one became suspicious at the sound that cuts through the quiet night.

Ladybug pops the cutter off of the window, pulling the screwdriver out from between her teeth and tapping lightly on the glass once, twice, three times before it begins to loosen. She forces the end of the tool in between the window and the circle she made, popping it up and out, catching it before it could fall into the jewelry store below them.

Chat watches, mouth open, eyes wide.

Ladybug turns to him, glass circle in one hand, the other on her cocked hip. “ _ That’s _ how you get into a place  _ quietly,  _ chaton.”

She smirks as she tosses him the glass, and he scrambles to grab it before it falls and shatters. He catches it, carefully leaning it against the chimney behind him.

He turns back to Ladybug, and immediately chokes.

She’s stripping out of her black sweats and hoodie, careful not to let it smudge the red face paint she has smeared across her eyes. She slides out of both articles of clothing, dropping them into the duffelbag at her feet. Underneath she’s wearing a black bodysuit made out of a material that Chat has never seen before, and he feels his ears turn pink as she bends over her bag, pulling out what looks like a harness and rope, shimmying into it and striding across the roof toward the chimney he had been leaning on earlier.

She loops the rope around the chimney, feeding it through a belay device and attaching a carabiner, clipping it to the front of the harness. She lets the rope slip through her hands as she walks back across the roof, pulling out a second harness and shoving it in Chat’s direction.

“Wear this.”

She repeats the process with him, handing him the extra amount of rope and showing him how to brace himself.

“I want you to keep me up. You need to feed this through and make sure that I don’t go straight down. Okay?”

He nods, mouth hanging open, and she places a finger beneath his chin, closing it.

“Keep sharp, kitty. Don’t let your claws cut through my rope.”

“Never, my Lady. I’m ready when you are.”

* * *

She’s in and out in 20 minutes.

The entire thing goes off surprisingly well, as Chat is so kind to say as he hauls her back through the hole in the window she’d climbed down through.

“Don’t celebrate yet,” she says, though she can’t help but feel just as excited as he is.

She could have never pulled off something this big alone. She’d been looking at this shop for months, trying to find the perfect angle. But nothing was working, until Chat had come along. And suddenly, there it was. Her angle.

Maybe he wasn’t so useless after all.

“We should probably go, then,” Chat says, and Ladybug nods in agreement. “Hand me the jewels and we’ll go.”

Ladybug pauses, halfway through pulling her hoodie back on.

“Excuse me?”

“The jewels,” Chat repeats, holding out a gloved hand and raising his eyebrows. “I’ll carry them. You have that duffle bag to worry about.”

“I’m putting the jewels  _ into _ the duffel bag,” Ladybug says, taking a step back and pulling the bag of jewels and cash closer to her chest. “There’s no way I’m going to hand over this bag to you. That’s like handing you a signed check.”

“What?”

“You heard me,” she says. “I’m carrying them. Now let’s go.”

“Oh no, no, no.” Chat laughs a bit, though there’s no humor in the action. “You can’t play me like that. I know exactly what you’re doing.”

Ladybug raises an eyebrow. “Uh, yeah? I’m carrying the jewels.”

“You’re going to take me out. Try and keep them all for yourself.”

“We’ve been working together for nearly 4 months, and you think I’d choose  _ now _ of all times to screw you over?”

Chat shrugs. “This is a bigger haul than normal. You very easily could.”

“What kind of backward-ass thought process is that?”

“Apparently the exact same kind as yours.”

Ladybug opens her mouth to object, but falls silent.

Fair enough.

But she refuses to admit it.

“Whatever. I’m out of here, then,” she says instead, turning to leave. Chat catches her arm, frowning.

“You’re not going anywhere until I get my half of the jewels.”

Ladybug stares at the hand on her arm, stare cold and calculating.

“Let. Go.”

Her voice is ice, and it freezes Chat where he stands. But he’s quick to thaw, a low growl rumbling in his throat.

“No.”

Ladybug turns, squaring up against Chat bitterly, her eyes narrowed threateningly.

“Let go, or I will  _ make _ you let go.”

Chat’s own eyes narrow, and he leans in half a foot until their noses nearly touch.

“Go ahead and try.”

The bag of jewels is dropped, Ladybug’s fist more occupied with meeting Chat’s jaw. He rears back, twisting her arm so that she flips the opposite direction. He pulls her closer to him, pushing her forearm into her back and raising it forward. She lets out a hiss of pain, and he leans in close to her ear.

“Is that all you’ve got, Bug? You were much harder to take care of the other night.”

She grits her teeth, throwing her torso forward and throwing him over her shoulder, letting out a breath as he slams onto the roof in front of her, eyes wide as he stares.

She moves to stand above him, foot pressed onto his chest.

“Just do yourself a favor and stay down, kitty.”

He doesn’t listen, smiling up at her instead as he takes hold of her ankle, shoving her upward and using her unbalance to sweep at her other leg, causing her to fall. She lets out a hiss as she falls backward, this time Chat the one hovering above her, his face inches from her own.

She can feel his breath on her lips. She blinks.

“Don’t you know cats don’t listen?”

He smirks down at her, and her stomach flips.

She can see the freckles that dot his nose, along the underside of his mask. She takes in the green of his eyes, the flecks of gold that weave through the color of his irises. She reaches out, brushes his hair out of his face. Chat stills.

“Kiss me.”

And he does.

He practically melts into her, lips moving in time with her own as they kiss. He’s hesitant at first, and she laughs at the thought of him thinking this is some kind of trap. He hums in question, and she shakes her head as she wraps her arms around his neck, palms flat on his back as she pulls him closer.

His tongue drags across her lower lip and for a moment she thinks she sees stars, opens her mouth and lets him explore, head dizzy from the adrenaline of the heist and the high of the kiss. She bites his lip experimentally, and he sighs. She locks the information away for future use.

She tangles her fingers in his hair as he lifts her hoodie a bit, ghosting his fingers along the hollows of her ribs. She shivers, and he smiles as he drags his hand down her side, settling on the V of her hip. He pulls back, breathing heavily, and she can see how flushed his face is in the light coming from the window beside them.

“I thought you said cats never listen,” she says, and he laughs, letting his head drop to rest on her collarbone.

“They’re selective,” he shrugs, and Ladybug laughs with him. She reaches to her right, tugging the bag of jewels to her side. She swings it through the air, and it lands on Chat’s back with a soft thud.

“What’s this for?”

“You can carry the jewels,” she sighs. “Just don’t go running off, or I’ll hunt you down.”

“I very much believe you will,” Chat says, sitting up, a cheshire grin nearly reaching his ears.

Ladybug rolls her eyes, pulling herself up and slinging her duffel bag over her shoulder. “Let’s get out of here. We’ve already stayed too long.”

“And whose fault was that?”

“Yours,” she says, securing a rope to the brick chimney on the roof and positioning herself on the edge of the building, preparing to grapple down. “It’s entirely yours for listening to me.”

Chat laughs, waiting for her to reach halfway down the building before following in her stead.

“You’re too hard to resist, My Lady.”

* * *

_ “So when do I get to learn your real name, Bug?” _

 

_ “Never, Kitty.” _

 

_ “Not even for a kiss?” _

 

_ “You’re going to kiss me either way, so does it matter?” _

 

_ “Hm. I suppose not, then.” _


End file.
